Best known as the former chairman of Microsoft, billionaire Bill Gates now has reportedly filed several patents aiming to help one day be able to stop hurricanes that plague the Gulf of Mexico each year.
“Theodp,” a well-known patent watcher, discovered the patent and then passed on the news to TechFlash. In the patent filings, Gates and several other inventors plan to use large fleets of vessels to mix warm Gulf of Mexico surface water with colder water under the surface.
Conduits would extend from one vessel beyond the ocean’s thermocline, which is an invisible line separating the warmer, mixed layer of water closer to the surface from the cooler and calmer water that is seen further below the ocean’s surface. Sunlight routinely is captured by the surface layer of ocean water, and a different vessel would be used as a heat/energy sink for water at deeper depths.
The following is an excerpt from one of the patent filings:
Below this mixed layer, however, the temperature decreases rapidly with depth, for example, as much as 20 degrees Celsius with an additional 150 m (500 ft) of depth. This area of rapid transition is called the thermocline. Below it, the temperature continues to decrease with depth, but far more gradually. In the Earth’s oceans, approximately 90% of the mass of water is below the thermocline. This deep ocean consists of layers of substantially equal density, being poorly mixed, and may be as cold as -2 to 3.degree. C.
So basically this is just putting off the problem (and amplifying it) till the thermocline also gets nicely heated after a few years of mixing and the hurricanes become worse than ever and the hurricane season lasts for longer.
Why would anyone patent technology to stop hurricanes?
A patent certainly seems to imply you’re going to use that patent to legally stop people from using your technology.
Does that mean Bill Gates will only stop hurricanes if you pay him? Otherwise, you’re on your own, suckers?
What a nice humanitarian! He should get the Nobel Prize.
Unless he has some ships the size P.R. this idea is nuts.
Bill Gates is teaming up with Al Gore to combat global warming. An unintended consequence will be disruption of the thermohaline circulation, which will result in global warming.
All the environmental wacko’s (ie Greenpeace) will find a reason why this technology should never be used.
They will come up with some fish or squid or something who’s spawning habits will be affected and get a court order prohibiting it’s use until untold environmental impact studies have been completed.
So, even if this technology was viable, cost effective, saved hundreds of lives and billions of dollars in damage, it will never be used because the envirowacko’s care more about squid than people.
Patrick, not necessarily. The amount of temperature reduction needed may not be very much relatively speaking.
There was a person posting at RealClimate last month, calling himself CycloneBuster, with this same idea, and also claiming that it would generate plenty of electricity. I assumed he was just trolling, but the hurricane busting possibility was verified, just not the electricity generation.
This post was then followed up at The Blackboard.
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2009/cyclone-busting-can-it-work/
Meh, it would be easier to just make some super tsar bombs, say… 500mega tons, and drop them in the hurricanes when they are still tropical depressions, and blow the weather system apart.
Geez postman,
It’s not like we all haven’t wanted to try that. If it wasn’t for the radioactive fallout it would be a no brainer.
#5 – Ah_Yea
Yeah, let’s fuck those stupid environmental impact studies… Who gives a fuck if this messes up the Gulf Stream? Except for those fucking tree hugging environmental assholes in northern Europe?
Would someone, please explain the photo?
#10, I have to agree with your sentiment. The Gulf Stream runs on a temperature-salinity differential. You don’t want to jack with that.
I may not subscribe to the current man-made climate change theories but this would definitely get my ire up if they were successful.
# 8 B.Dog said, “If it wasn’t for the radioactive fallout it would be a no brainer.”
“Fallout” only occurs where there are solids to irradiate and then spread. At least in any amount to worry about.
# 12 LibertyLover said, “The Gulf Stream runs on a temperature-salinity differential. You don’t want to jack with that.”
GazProm should do this and cut off the heat train to the EU.
#10 & #12,
It makes you wonder about Gates. If we could see in 5 minutes that this plan will never happen, why couldn’t he?
Oh, and Jägermeister, how rude of those hurricanes slamming into the gulf coast, flooding lowland marshes, and destroying pristine habitat without first getting an appropriate environmental study and government approval!
How DARE we think that just because a hurricane is going to do incalculable environmental damage which could last for decades (Katrina) and stir up the Gulf’s thermo layers anyhow, that we should be proactive and save the environment!
How DARE we!!
They already know one thing that would have a major impact. Drop a few thousand gallons of vegetable oil in the storms path using heavy bombers to try and get a good spread. This would cause a much smaller storm surge, smaller storm waves, and help short circuit the heat and water vapor transfer until after the the digestible oil was consumed by microbes.
They aren’t going to do this because you would do some damage to the environment and might turn the thing toward some other location causing class action law suits from those hit and people needing rain located further inland who will claim you are the reason they didn’t get rain.
#1 is right. There are unintended consequences.
Hurricanes contain amazing amounts of energy that starts with the sun. The water and air of the tropics capture large amounts of tropical sunlight. When you consider that 70% of the earth surface is water, that adds up to a lot of surface area to capture solar heat. Some of that energy is dispersed by storms.
If you eliminate hurricanes, then where does that build up of energy go? It will warm even more water ocean water, which will cause even more powerful hurricanes. The Gulf Stream will get warmer. That warm water will blast north, warming the North Atlantic Ocean and Greenland. That will cause melting of ice up there.
If we are concerned about global warming, then we actually want more hurricanes to wick away that stored energy and dissipate it as wind.
Basically, when you f**k with nature, it f**ks you back ten fold.
This doesn’t eliminate hurricanes or wreck the Gulf Stream. You would only implement the water uptake when you see the hurricane forming, and this would reduce its effect.
I got a better idea. Fix Vista.
Lovely. He has a patent to fuck up the deep ocean circulation.
#16
What a dumb answer, Ah_Yea.
They should do this just because it sounds like fun.
What other applications could this patent be used for? That’s my question. I need to give this patent a read to understand it better.
#20 Lou,
Vista’s fix comes out October 22nd.
Clive Cussler called, he wants his book back Bill!
Super rich guy with hurricane machine. Isn’t that the plot of a James Bond movie?
Well at least Bill is doing something good. Not like that Steve Jobs who is sucking his iSheeps and getting liver transplants. iSheeps love to pay for Steve Job’s medical bills.
Way to go Bill…
Ok first of all Im a Carpenter and I have a 2 year college degree. So Im no expert but Id want to venture to guess that that would not be a very good Idea. Lets see arent we dealing with Global warming now. Polar Ice caps and such. So lets take the cold water from the bottom of the ocean. Then Put Warm water back in its place. Won’t that kill the animals on the ocean floor turning a good bit of the water red. Sounds kinda biblical if ya know what I mean. Also. Have you ever been in a hurricane? do you know what it takes to build a house and how catastrophic these storms are? it would take alot of barges to pump the amount of water needed. Billions of dollars to pump the cold water out of the sea.
I’ve been traveling around the net checking out how this patent pending technology is being covered and reader responses. My impressions remains the same:
1) April Fools!
2) ‘There’s a sucker born every minute.’ AKA: ‘A fool and his money are soon parted.’
3) See what happens when you skip out of college and start a software company instead? You should have taken that physics class Mr. Gates.
4) Anybody want to buy a perpetual motion machine? Going cheap! Today only!
5) Yeah, there must be LOTS of lead in the water over there in Redmond.
I’ve seen this idea before. Win Wenger published an article about it 4 years ago.
Some of the bloggers have it exactly right others are completely clueless. I can’t believe there is even a discussion about such a ludicrous idea. Hurricanes (typhoons, cyclones) are all extremely large heat engines. You dissipate one by changing the temperature of the ocean (Gulf Stream, Gulf of Mexico) that alone would have unintended consequences. If you’re successful in actually dampening down a hurricane, what happens to the energy that needs to be equalized??? More hurricanes, more intense hurricanes, changes in the sea surface temperature? This would cause so much havoc with the ocean currents and atmosphere that global warning would look like a walk in the park..